What is the best way to teach offense? What does it mean to truly understand offense? What does true offensive execution look like? The short answers to these questions can be summarized like this: The best way to teach offense is to teach the basic components of offensive basketball (creating space, filling space, delivering the basketball into space & scoring). For players to understand these components, as they relate to offensive execution, means that they are able to recognize how to create proper spacing vs. various types of defenses....instinctively. When players gain this understanding, execution is seamless. Of course, the natural ebb and tide of (flow of the game) will remain. There will be high and low points of execution, and points at which a coach will need to offer much needed third party perspective. Nevertheless, a coach's job is much easier on the back end when he/she takes time on the front end to truly teach offense as a system....a system of spaces, arcs, lines, triangles, and angles....rather than handicapping players with a complicated series of sets. When coaches call plays, what are they really doing. If they do so possession after possession, they are effectively taking the vision of their team away, and asking them to execute on the basis of dictation rather than recognition. I truly believe this. Some of the greatest coaches, the greatest play-callers, had some of the best vision....the best cognitive minds in the game. In any given game....any given stretch....any given season, these coaches' minds could out think the opposing coach and their players. In fairness, great players can and do emerge from these types of systems because they are exposed to these great thinkers...and over time they acquire similar thought processes. Another method that coaches can use is to teach the principles of good offensive execution, and allow a team to execute based on recognition of defenses, and understanding of these principles. This process is timely, and often painstaking. But it can be very rewarding....to the coach and players alike. Not to say that either method is better than the other, but it should be taken into consideration that there are, in fact, two different methods of teaching offense. Perhaps, the coach's personality will dictate which style he/she prefers. Both require lots of patience and a solid foundational understanding of the game. The end results....they can often look the same. Coach Ison http://youthstudentathlete.com
Message was edited by: CoachLarkinIson
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